Seen on RISKS-L - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Mar 2002

...
   NASA
hasn't lost data, it's lost the will to hire and
 retain talented people who can make things work. Just
 like everyplace else in this whacko economy...  
 No arguing with that, but I think this particular example is real.  The
 problem is oversimplified and understated with the phrase "forgotton file
 format" - if I'm remembering the incident accurately, it was more a case
 of "obsolete media format" - 200 bpi *7* track tape, once common. 
Oh, it can be worse- CDC used to have 1-inch, 14-track drives, too...

...
  I heard about this project during the 1995-1996
austral summer.

 -ethan

 P.S. - it was reminscent of the problems of reading the 1960 census.   
Like many genealogists, I'm still moaning the burning of
the federal copies of the 1890 census. Can't tell you how
many people would give up years of their lives to have that
data. Each county should have kept their own originals, and 
each state should have kept a copy of their state's. But very
little has ever surfaced other than the federal ones.

OTOH, Harrison County, Indiana, where my ancestors settled
after leaving the Shenandoah Valley, managed to finds its
1810 census, and hardly any region can find those anymore...